Steadying himself by the rail along the engine-room casing he hurried to the wheel. A bearded petty officer moved aside as he came aft. This was his Coxswain, a morose man about the age of his father, who obeyed orders like an automaton, and had once (mellowed by strong waters) been known to smile.
"Cast off forward!" The engine-room bell rang twice, and the Midshipman gave a quick turn to the wheel. For an instant the boat plunged as if in uncertainty, then swung round on the slope of a slate-grey wave and slid off on her quest. Forward in the bows the bowmen were crouched, peering through the rain. Presently one of them hailed hoarsely.
"Port a bit, sir," supplemented the Coxswain. "That's them, there!" He pointed ahead to where indistinct shapes showed black against the troubled waters. The bell rang again in the tiny engine-room, and the Leading Stoker, scenting adventures, threw up the hatch and thrust a head and hairy chest into the cold air. His interest in the proceedings apparently soon waned, however, for he shut the hatch down again and busied himself mysteriously--always within reach of the throttle and reversing-lever--with an oil-can.
Going very slow, the boat crept alongside the foremost lighter, a huge derelict that, when loaded, carried fifty tons of coal. They had been moored alongside one another to the wharf, but, rocking in the swell, had chafed through their moorings and broken adrift.
Now to take in tow an unwieldy lighter in the dark with a heavy swell running, and to moor it safely in the spot whence it came, is a piece of work that requires no small judgment. However, one by one, the three truants were captured and secured, and then, with the grey dawn of a winter morning breaking overhead, the picket boat swung round on her return journey. On the way she passed another boat racing shoreward for the mails. The Midshipman at the wheel raised his hand with a little gesture of salutation, and she went by in a shower of spray.
Half an hour later the Midshipman of the Second Picket Boat, garbed in the "rig of the day," was ladling sugar over his porridge with the abandon of one who is seventeen and master of his fate. A messenger appeared at the gunroom door--